


The (Re)Call of Cthulhu

by Guede



Series: Of Werewolves and Tentacles [4]
Category: Cthulhu Mythos - Fandom, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alive Laura Hale, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Melissa McCall, BAMF Stiles, Belly Rubs, Cthulhu Mythos, F/M, Humor, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Scott McCall & Stiles Stilinski Friendship, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Werewolf Biology, Werewolf Culture, Werewolf Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 14:33:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8894362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: “Okay, so that?” Stiles says, letting the last page dangle from his fingers.  “That’s not typical.  I mean, if you’re getting sex, you usually have a pretty compelling argument for leaving the world as-is, instead of importing Cthulhic entities who make the Alien chestburster look like a Hallmark card about pregnancy fears.  And how is it Scott’s fault that non-drunk women can tell this guy’s a loser?  Is Scott running a safe-walk patrol or something?”On Stiles’ fourth day back in Beacon Hills, they finally track down the evil wizard.  Not that this makes it any easier to stop him.





	1. Chapter 1

The fourth day Stiles wakes up in Beacon Hills, he doesn’t move an inch till he’s done a complete inventory of his surroundings and situation. He’s got a shirt on. The bed under him feels like an actual bed, without the horizontal dips of a foldable couch mattress. His phone is tucked in one hand, and when he peeks out from under the blankets, he sees his bags stacked up against the wall.

So…he’s in Scott’s guest room. On the guest bed. And, after careful experimental stretching, he determines that he is, in fact, alone in it.

Stiles slides out of bed and over to the door. That’s slightly ajar so he can hear people sleeping in the other room, but he doesn’t think they sound like Scott or Allison, unless Allison’s got vocal capability in the baritone register under that sunny alto. And come to think of it, he’s pretty sure he fell asleep on the couch again. One of the couch cushions is even sitting on the floor right next to the bed.

He starts to scroll through his phone for defensive spells, but then he spots what is clearly an anti-nightmare amulet hanging on the back of the door. Which then leads him to the protective runes subtly worked into the doorway stain, and then to the iron horseshoe nailed over the window, and he decides to instead root around in the room for an alternative to magic. He’s probably safe, but you always want a blunt implement to hand when you _don’t_ have one and he doesn’t want to accidentally snarl Scott’s existing protective wards. Talk about being a shitty guest.

Scott keeps lacrosse gear in the guest room closet too, as it turns out. Stiles appropriates a stick and uses it to nudge open the door, just as the low wheezing in the other room stops.

There’s a short pause, a stuttering noise like a jammed chainsaw, and then the wheezing starts up again. So Stiles goes ahead and eases out through the door, stick ready to fend off whatever he doesn’t have time to pull up a spell on his phone for, and…Peter waves a cleaver at him from the kitchen.

“Oh, you’re awake,” he says, while Stiles jerks the stick up to parry, then spots the pineapple sitting on the counter in front of Peter. “We’re out of milk and eggs and cereal, so Scott went downstairs for bagels and I was just going to start a fruit salad to tide us over.”

Then he thwacks down the cleaver. Stiles jumps, because sure, he no longer thinks Peter has murderous-madman intentions—towards _him_ , anyway—but he’s not expecting the pineapple top that goes flipping spikes-over-end across the counter, rimming off a drawer handle, and then tipping neatly into the trashcan. Maybe that’s standard West Coast stuff, but where he’s been living for the last decade, fruit has the decency to come precut and premixed in deli containers.

Also, Derek whips himself up off the couch and lands back on the mattress in a crouch, claws and fangs out, eyes glowing, hair violently spiked, looking like something that crawled out of the ghoul-end of the Dreamlands. A naked something. Complete with bobbing between his legs.

So look, Stiles is by no means shading the guy, and Derek’s view is _nice_ , personality aside, but honestly, the first thing that comes to mind is: “So you’re gonna wash Scott’s sheets, right?”

Derek stares at him. For a second Stiles isn’t sure the guy actually recognizes him, but then Derek sniffs and his snarl relaxes to a scowl. His back end lowers enough into the rumpled sheets that certain things are hidden, thus releasing Stiles’ eyeballs, and then he makes irritable grunty noises while he starts feeling around the mattress.

“I apologize for him,” Peter sighs. Working away at that pineapple, chop-chopping it into juicy, drippy chunks that he then scoops onto the cleaver’s blade and drops into a bowl, letting his fingers hang down for a second so the juices can run off their tips. “There was a containment situation when they were finishing up the school basement, and as usual, Derek managed to have his clothes torn right off him.”

“Okay, so…didn’t he just get off a plane with extras?” Stiles says. He’s only edging into the kitchen because while Derek _looks_ like he’s getting dressed, he _sounds_ like he’s eviserating that poor Henley.

Granted, Peter’s nipples also seem determined to perk their way right through the tight white tee he’s wearing, but that’s probably just gross bodily injury, as opposed to manslaughter. It’s also _probably_ not part of some nefarious plan to rewire Stiles’ morning impulses, given how intently Peter is now working on some strawberries, removing not just the green tops, but also any unripe bits. “Of course, but when Derek’s decided to sleep somewhere, he’s just as hard to relocate as you are,” he says, just before turning an amused smile on Stiles. “Fortunately, this time you attached yourself to a cushion, or else we really would have had to come up with a better divider than your phone.”

“Like you’d go outside when Melissa and Laura are yelling at each other in the parking lot,” Derek grumbles, coming up for air. That’s clearly not his shirt he’s squeezed himself into, and he’s clearly about to race its splitting seams to the door when he suddenly spots something. A look of relief comes over his face and he grabs up a duffel bag, then scoots with it into the bathroom.

“No, but I can text the people who _haven’t_ come home yet to get your bag out,” Peter calls after him. His tone is equal parts reproachful and resigned, and his brows actually jump a little in surprise when Derek lets out a muffled, outraged cry about letting McCall break into his car _again_. “Ah, well. No good deed goes…hmmm?”

“What?” Stiles says, as he leans over the counter to look into the bowl. So he’s got his hand on Peter’s back. So he just woke up and his hand-eye-foot coordination is especially unreliable at that time, and Peter’s a handy support surface. Also, they’re temporarily alone and now he’s remembered that he’d concluded Peter was probably dateable, pending background checks, and so he is maybe a little susceptible to morning overtures involving food. No reason to let that pineapple’s sacrifice go to waste. “Containment situation, you were saying?”

The corners of Peter’s mouth are twitching, but otherwise he doesn’t even slow down as he sweeps the cut strawberries into the bowl and then reaches for a couple bananas. “Melissa thought they should look around the janitor’s area again, on the theory that he was an innocent tool and the real evil wizard was just trying to cover up his tracks.”

“Makes sense, that goes back to the Nemeton. Take out your competition, _then_ execute the evil plan,” Stiles says. One banana slice slides away from the cleaver and rolls over to the edge of the cutting board nearest to him, so he snags it and eats it. “So somebody found another nightmare pencil?”

“Well, no, more like they accidentally broke the heating oil line while they were looking around,” Peter sighs. He does the knife-scoop move with the rest of the banana slices, except for a second one that just happens to tip off and plop down right in front of Stiles. “Some days, Stiles, we’re perfectly capable of sabotaging ourselves, no outside forces required.”

Stiles is already giving him a bit of a look over the fallen banana slice, but Peter just shrugs that off. He’s playing casual, but his back muscles tense under Stiles’ hand when Stiles finally reaches for the slice. And again when, instead of eating it, Stiles holds it up for him.

“Okay, maybe Miskatonic’s not going to be that much of an adjustment for you,” Stiles says.

Peter’s still amused, but under that, there’s a little…well, okay, there’s lust, for sure, but there’s also this frisson that has nothing to do with sex, and everything to do with sheer curiosity. “Is that your plan, after you’re done here?”

“I—” Have spent an entire semester prepping non-answer answers to that question, and not just because Stiles’ dad is getting increasingly antsy about pinning Stiles down on it. But this is the West Coast, Stiles reminds himself. Even Peter, who actually knows his Nitocris from Nyarlathotep, probably doesn’t care about the relative prestige of graduate placements with whoever married into Innsmouth families seven generations ago. “—honestly, I don’t know, but I still have two months on my lease back East, and like hell am I leaving my collection of vintage Pickman etchings to my landlord. I paid _actual_ blood I _actually_ drained myself for some of those.”

“That would be a shame, wouldn’t it?” Peter says, with a little laughing undercurrent to his voice. He’s put the cleaver down and is twisting slightly towards Stiles, so his head is sort of insinuatingly bobbing over the banana slice. “I admit I feel the same about our old family chronicles. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve saved those from the recycling bin.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says. He actually does have something clever to add after that, but…the banana slice is getting mushy between his fingers, and Peter’s leaning over, and if he’s really, really honest with himself, he’s still feeling off-kilter from this whole trip. Antarctic expeditions involving lost alien civilizations have been less disorienting.

So he presses a little on the hand he has on Peter’s back and Peter—Peter stoops for the _banana_ , the asshole. Chortling all the way, his lips quivering around Stiles’ thumb and forefinger as Stiles attempts to will his disappointment and embarrassment into a bludgeon to the back of Peter’s very attractively mussed skull.

But then, when Stiles tries to step back, Peter swings his arm around behind Stiles to block off that escape route. And he dips down into the sucking Stiles’ fingers thing, his mouth sliding past the first joint, the snickering turned into something lower and rougher, coming from deeper in the throat as his very, very blue eyes lift over Stiles’ hands to brush a warm, inviting gaze over Stiles’ face.

“Jerk,” Stiles mutters, even as he puts his hand back on Peter. Right on the buttock and _no_ , he doesn’t twitch when Peter lets out an approving groan. “And a show-off.”

“But _Stiles_ ,” Peter starts, easing off Stiles’ fingers, so Stiles rolls his eyes and shoves Peter back against the counter and kisses him before the asshole can really do anything with that.

Peter’s happily going with it, his knees spraddling slightly as Stiles moves up between them. Both his hands drop to Stiles’ waist, kneading a little bit, and then they start fluttering up under Stiles’ shirt as Stiles swipes his tongue along Peter’s teeth, chasing a lingering sweetness from the banana. Stiles shivers, fighting down the tickles, and then slips one hand into the front of Peter’s jeans.

He’s just got his thumb on the button of Peter’s fly when two things happen: one, two loud, deliberately-spaced thumps come from the bathroom, and two, Scott’s voice comes drifting through the door, talking with awkward casualness about how sure, Mom, Stiles is probably up now and if he’s not, he’s probably had a good enough sleep that they should wake him.

Stiles pulls back from Peter’s mouth and tells himself that early alarms are something to be thankful for. Really. “She never did get around to seeing me last night,” he mutters, removing his hands from Peter and scooting over to the sink to wash them.

“Oh, no, she did come by, but you were asleep,” Peter says. Also looking disgruntled, though it only takes him as long as he needs to flick his clothing in order to smooth that off his face, and replace it with an innocuous, oh, the fruit were just there expression. “She and I talked a little bit about how you’d been after the school, and she decided she’d just try again in the morning. And there she is.”

“Speak of the interfering mom,” Melissa says dryly as she comes in. 

Scott stifles a gusty sigh of relief upon spotting Stiles and Peter at opposite sides of the kitchen, but from the way Melissa’s looking at them, she knows. She knows everything down to setting her bag of bagels well away from where Peter is wiping down the counter, with a sidelong look that Peter is studiously avoiding.

And then she pivots smoothly to putting her hands on Stiles’ shoulders, a worried look on her face. “Hey, so how are you feeling?” she says.

“Oh, um, I’m good. I’m…fruit salad breakfast, super healthy, got to get those vitamin levels back up,” Stiles stammers. He flails out his arm, grazes the edge of the fruit bowl, and snugs it up against his side as Melissa continues eyeing him with skeptical concern. “I mean. Not that I was working that hard or anything, sacked out here while you guys were finishing up the school.”

“Well, you’ve done a lot so far, I wouldn’t call that an undeserved break,” Melissa says. She pinches up Stiles’ shirt by the shoulders, tugging him in for a closer, frowning look. Then she sighs and pats him back, and turns to help Scott lay out the cream cheese tubs. “Anyway, it seems to have quieted down a little. Cross your fingers, but the hospital and the sheriff haven’t had to deal with any new psych patients since yesterday.”

Scott brightens up. “Really? That’s great, does that mean we’re close to finding them?”

“Probably means whoever it is, they’re too busy setting up for their real target to bother with us,” Derek says as he comes out of the bathroom. Fully dressed, in appropriately-sized clothing, with his hair combed down so it looks less likely to wage battle on its own. He sidles up on Scott’s side of Melissa and grabs an unsliced banana and starts peeling it. “Or maybe these things are really that different, but that’s what always happens.”

Much as Stiles hates to support the punch-happy, grouchy werewolf, he…nods along with Derek. “I think it’s end-game time. I wish we were further along in catching the guy, but honestly, I’m not too sure what to look for now,” he says reluctantly. “Nobody’s going around yelling specifics about what they want to do, and the only out-and-out shady guy we’ve found so far was Ligotti, who can’t be it if he was a meat-puppet.”

“I’m not sure I like calling him that. He wasn’t doing the right thing, but he was still somebody with family, with family in this town that I’ll have to explain his death to,” Melissa mutters. It’s off-handed because she’s digging into her purse, but the reprimand is that much more effective for not being shoved in Stiles’ face so he can just blow it off on self-righteousness grounds. “Well, anyway, we know they know we’re the people who are most likely to stop them, since they went after the Nemeton.”

“Hardly a useful differentiator.” Then Peter smiles and offers Melissa a strawberry flower he managed to carve at some point, while making out with Stiles. “Though of course it’s a compliment to our prior successes, headed up by yourself.”

Melissa rolls her eyes but holds out her bagel for the strawberry. “Don’t think I haven’t forgotten all the patrols you’ve ducked out on this week, Hale. As soon as we catch this guy…so they were working with Ligotti. Danny’s gotten back some of the hard drive, but he doesn’t think he’ll get back all of it any time soon.”

“Anything useful on what we did get back?” Scott says, while stepping back to the fridge. He pours out two glasses of water, which makes sense when Allison walks out of the other bedroom.

“Should I look at any of it?” Stiles asks. “People dabbling in this stuff usually like to write things up in Latin or alchemical symbols, or—”

“Danny hasn’t said anything about that sort of thing, and Deaton let him know he should be looking out for it,” Melissa says, shaking her head. Then she pulls some papers out of her purse, along with her phone. “He _did_ say that Ligotti didn’t make that stuff that got mixed into the fertilizer—”

“Summoning powder,” Allison and Stiles both say. Then Allison ducks her head, gives Stiles an apologetic smile, and tucks herself up by Scott to get at the avocado cream cheese.

“Right, that. Ligotti didn’t use webmail, so Danny was able to get some emails off the hard drive,” Melissa goes on. “He’s got a thread where Ligotti sets up a meeting with somebody _not_ the janitor to mix up what he told poor Pedro was some filler to help stretch out the fertilizer. It looks like after Pedro told Chris we could have the surplus, he went and found he didn’t have as much as he remembered, and he panicked and went to Ligotti to make up the difference.”

Stiles looks up, but Derek beats him to it. “So this evil guy, he knows that we’re going to the school for fertilizer—” Derek says.

“And he got in there and took away some of it because he knew Pedro would go to the garden store to restock,” Allison chimes in. “So he’s got access to the school.”

“Well, you don’t have to get into the school to get at the shed where they keep the lawn supplies,” Scott says. He looks very guilty about puncturing Allison’s bubble, but he cheers up when she smears cream cheese on his bagel. “It’s way at the other end of the fields, you could get to it without anybody at the school noticing.”

“But without people noticing that you’re hauling away entire bags of fertilizer?” Peter says. “The road doesn’t swing back there, so unless we’re back to werewolves or someone with similar strength, you’d have to bring it to the back parking lot and drive away.”

Melissa nods and frowns. She’s spread out the papers with one hand and is looking over them while she nibbles on the bagel in her other hand. Some of them look like the graphs she’d brought to Deaton’s clinic. “I know we don’t have the evidence to back it up yet, but I keep thinking it comes back to the high school,” she mutters. “All of the people we’ve checked into the hospital, they all went there. And I know it’s the only high school in town so that’s not saying much, but I just…”

Scott and Allison exchange looks—Scott guilty, Allison reassuring but worried—while Peter gives Derek a check-up glance. Which Derek takes very defensively, glowering back and making sharp ‘ _what_ ’ gestures. Though he subsides when a very put-upon Peter silently pushes the trashcan over with one foot so Derek has somewhere to put that banana peel.

“The pencils too. Again, I know anybody could’ve gotten in there and scattered them around, but it just seems so…deliberate,” Melissa adds.

“Where they were?” Stiles says. “Was there a pattern that you could tell?”

Melissa pulls a frustrated face at her bagel. “I wouldn’t call it a _pattern_ —that box in the classroom you were in, two other classrooms on the first floor, each of them used by different teachers in different subjects who focus on different grades. A couple in the basement. I can’t see a connection. But on the other hand, it doesn’t look like somebody just wandering around. I’ve seen a _lot_ of people causing mayhem just for the sake of it, and this doesn’t fit.”

“I guess there’s no way this is settling a score?” Stiles asks. “I mean, so far I think we’ve just got the evil wizard covering his tracks, with Ligotti and the Neme—no, wait, but the Deep One in the greenhouse, they weren’t around for the wizard.”

Peter stops mid-stealing the jalapeno cheddar cream cheese from Derek. “So why _were_ they here? It’s not because we lost the Nemeton—”

Scott makes a small startled noise, then starts fumbling for his phone so Allison has to poke him to get him to see that Stiles is shaking his head. “No, nope, far as Dad could tell, Deep One was just in the area and sensed Great Old One vibes and came to check out the party,” Stiles says. “I think they probably got attacked so they wouldn’t pass the news back to somebody back at Miskatonic, or the other places with hosting programs.”

“But why were they _here_?” Allison asks. She’s kind of sharp, though she immediately pulls a sheepish face to make it clear she’s not angry at Stiles, she’s just got an idea. “We’re way inland. We’ve got some creeks running through the preserve, but it’s not like we have a major lake nearby, and…well, Scott was saying it looked like a fish-person…wouldn’t it be really hard for them to travel?”

“They have ways. And have a deal with at least one major Hollywood special-effects company that I know of, but anyway, never mind about cribbing them for live-action _Aquaman_ and _Swamp Thing_ ,” Stiles says. “Dad was saying this one was on a research grant, studying comparative education.”

Melissa suddenly stabs her finger at the papers lying in front of her. “The school,” she says, oblivious to the startled, glowy-eyed werewolves all around her. “It’s the high school, I know it in my gut, I just can’t see how it all goes together.”

“Nobody goes there anymore. Of all of us, I mean,” Scott says hesitantly. He runs his hand back over his head, smoothing down where his wolfed-out ears had puffed out his hair a bit. “And I don’t think there’s anybody supernatural in the students or the teachers right now…”

“There are some wannabe witches that Dad’s keeping an eye on, but they aren’t anywhere far enough along for this,” Allison says. “Anyway, they’re more about hexing people with pimples, not killing them.”

“No shifters either,” Peter says. Then he pauses and tilts his head. “Well, not a shifter, but there is that half-fae girl.”

“Fae hate Cthulhic entities,” Stiles says. He finally thinks to put the fruit bowl on the table and Peter immediately dips into it with a spoon, while pretending like his interest in more details about this fae versus Great Old Ones phenomenon is obviously the only reason why he’s licking the fruit off his spoon. “It’s kind of an extradimensional reality rivalry crossed with a deep and pure hatred of slime, not that I blame them for that last one.”

Peter winces. “Having seen the first estimates for recarpeting the house, neither can I.”

“All right, then, I won’t worry about Aoife,” Melissa says, with just enough of a verbal poke that Stiles flushes and jerks his head around and grabs the first bagel he sees. “Look, maybe we’re going at this the wrong way, trying to think of who this person is mad at. What kind of people call _up_ something like a Shub-Niggurath just for revenge, anyway? Don’t you usually want to be able to gloat about your victims afterward, not destroy the whole world? I know you said they’re usually crazy, but—”

“Well, they’re crazy, but it’s privileged crazy, not ax-crazy. I mean, Great Old One encounters and how they always go wrong are actually pretty well-documented compared to a lot of the eldritch horrors around,” Stiles explains around his bagel. It’s poppy-seed, which isn’t really his thing, but he’s already taken a bite out of it so he can’t really put it back, and he doesn’t have any lab specimens to feed it to. “Plus you have to _read_ about all those past failures in order to learn how to call one up. So if you’re the kind of person who does it anyway, you’re the kind of person who thinks they’re special, right? What happened before isn’t going to happen to you, because they were all idiots and you’re not, you’re the one who has it all figured out.”

“So we’re looking for somebody with a superiority complex,” Allison says. “Who’s also a good researcher.”

Stiles nods. “Yeah, so, basically, a failed nerd, because regular nerds don’t learn to show up other people, they do it because they love it. So this guy, whoever he is, he probably started out really smart, really promising, but now he’s all bitter because he feels life never recognized his genius, and he thinks he deserves that. Like I said, privileged crazy. If you already know society’s unfair to certain people, it’s not going to be a shock to your system when it’s unfair to you.”

“Not a lot of women messing around with these, I’m guessing,” Allison says dryly.

“Well…no. I mean, you read the older literature, it makes it sound like it’s always the social margins who get into this kind of trouble, but come on. Having free time to travel around, do research, buy your supplies…how exactly are you doing that if you’re poor and hustling for living? Or stuck in the house cooking and cleaning all day?” Stiles reaches for the cream cheese, figuring that maybe it’ll mask some of the poppy-seed taste. “I once took all the confirmed Cthulhic ringleaders for the last three centuries and did a composite, and it looked like the Aryan Nation’s poster ch—”

Melissa straightens up. “Harris.”

The name rings a bell, but it’s obviously ringing a lot more for the others. Scott chokes on his bagel, then hastily chugs some water, while Allison alternates between thumping him on the back and frowning around him at Melissa.

“Really?” she says. “I know he hates people enough, but he doesn’t know magic—”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Peter says. He looks sour enough that Stiles can tell he’s mad at himself for not beating Melissa. “I told you people, I thought he knew far more about what the darach was up to than he was letting on, but you didn’t think he was worth going after.”

“It wasn’t that, it was we didn’t have proof she wasn’t just forcing him, and we’d already had four teachers turn up dead that year, Peter,” Melissa snaps. “You can criticize when you don’t have to worry about the county shutting down the school and relocating all the kids somewhere else.”

Peter and Melissa have a little stare-down, and then Peter grudgingly dips his head, muttering something about the value of multiple perspectives. Melissa presses her lips together, then shakes off her irritation and picks up her papers.

“I knew there was something,” she says, holding them out for everyone to see. “I kept going over what the patients have been saying, trying to find a pattern, and they’re all going on about how the world hasn’t really seen anything, how we’ll be taught a _lesson_ —it sounds like the usual spiel at first, but they keep using the word ‘lesson,’ they don’t ever change that. And he can get into the school, can get his hands on weird chemicals, keeps grudges, and is exactly that kind of awful.”

“Your old chemistry teacher?” Stiles says, finally placing the name.

It’s like he lobbed a rock into a still pond. Sure, nobody seems that annoyed with him—aside from Derek, but Derek appears to be annoyed with Stiles in general—but he’s clearly broken their flow and they have to scramble to regroup. Because they’ve already got this down without his interruption.

Melissa and Scott start making calls to track down Harris and they’re obviously following a memorized phone tree with those. Allison goes into the living room and begins pulling out weapons from various hiding places, while Derek finishes up his food and then goes out to get his sisters. Only Peter’s left with Stiles, and even then, Peter’s a little more interested in what the others are planning.

Not that Stiles is jealous, or anything ridiculously self-centered like that. Taking down a Shub-Niggurath-summoning wizard is a big deal, and it’s going to help a lot of people, and it’s great that they don’t need him to hold their hand through it. It’s going to make it all a lot simpler and probably way less messy, with a much lower chance of anybody getting hurt during it, and…

“Stiles?” Peter says, just as Stiles has gotten to the edge of the kitchen. He must be picking up something on the werewolf radar, because he looks like he’s contemplating how to lure Stiles back with the fruit bowl by him, and not just for purposes of molesting food.

“I’m just, I should get dressed,” Stiles says. “And it seems like a good time, since you—”

“Well, don’t go far,” Melissa says, walking by. “Once we find him, we need to disarm whatever he’s got going on and I want to get that ironed out with you ahead of time.”

So Stiles feels a little bit better. She is _good_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PIckman etchings reference Lovecraft's _Pickman's model_.
> 
> The funny thing about Lovecraft's racism is that for all he tries to cast mixed-race people and nonwhites as being more likely to serve Cthulhu, when you look at his most effective villains who've done the most damage, they're usually men with initially high social standing and very WASPy names and/or descriptions. Curwen from _The Case of Charles Dexter Ward_ was a tall, good-looking blond guy, for example.
> 
> Also, Lovecraft's good guys invariably take so long to catch on that sometimes, honestly, you're kind of rooting for them to get taken out. It's like they all cuddle Idiot Balls to sleep at night.


	2. Chapter 2

Harris, as it turns out, hasn’t been seen since Stiles, Scott and Allison ran into him at the high school. Laura and Deaton check out his bachelor pad downtown, and when they’re sure it’s empty and he’s not coming back, Deaton calls to ask if Stiles can come over and look around, see if he’s got any ideas about what Harris might be planning for his big showdown.

Predictably, Peter drives Stiles over. Less predictably—except for how Stiles never gets what he’d like, even when he’s changed his mind about what that is—Derek chooses to catch a ride with them.

“You told Erica she could drive your car when she pried the keys out of your cold, dead, wolfsbane-soaked fingers,” Peter says to Derek, as he slides into shotgun before Stiles can.

“Yeah, and she _wishes_ she got to drive. Scott said he wouldn’t let her,” Derek says. He still looks pretty miserable. He even keeps fidgeting one hand towards his jeans pocket like he’s got phantom car-key pains there. “If it was anybody _but_ Scott, I wouldn’t believe that he really doesn’t have anybody else to ask because he’s let everybody else borrow ahead of him.”

Stiles pulls himself into the backseat, while Peter shoots him a commiserating look via the rearview mirror and then starts asking Derek about how he’s doing in New York, and did he remember to actually excuse himself or did he just run out again—Derek’s some kind of freelancer, from the sound of it—and even in New York he does know he’s going to run out of people who haven’t gotten burned by him, right? Derek, for his part, seems to know exactly what Peter’s doing, and he makes a couple comments about the last few business trips Peter’s been on, with just enough detail to make Peter snippy and Stiles almost log in and put a rush job on that background check he’s ordered on Peter.

Anyway, the two of them keep themselves busy while Stiles answers a couple follow-up emails from his father, plus one from the San Francisco team wanting info so they can start prepping counter-PR, and after that they’ve arrived at the bungalow where this Harris guy lives.

Its front yard has already been plastered in police tape, while down the street, there’s a parked police car with a uniformed officer standing next to it, interviewing some neighbors. Peter makes a thoughtful noise, looking over the scene, then drives them to the next street over where Deaton meets them and they all hop a backyard fence to get into the house.

“What’d you tell them, gas line?” Derek says to Deaton.

“No, just general suspected hazardous materials. Melissa didn’t think we could get the gas company to send out a truck this quickly,” Deaton says. Then he stoops and breaks a simple containment ring of runestones that’s been set up around the back door. “Seems to fit his behavior better anyway, his neighbors have been complaining that his trash bags leak, in their words, ‘funny colors.’”

“That sounds more like it,” Stiles mutters, stepping through the door.

“Chris and I already went through and we’ve flagged a few things for you to look at,” Deaton adds, holding up a pad of fluorescent-green Post-Its. “But we haven’t done a deep dive yet. Granted, I’m not sure…”

Peter comes up to where Stiles has stopped, looking at the shopping list pinned to the fridge door. Just below a slightly creased green Post-It, neat lines of handwriting run from ghouls’ bone powder, coarse grind, to shoggoth buds. Each line has at least one dollar amount written next to it, and sometimes multiple amounts, and then Stiles realizes that it’s not a shopping list, it’s a quote list.

“He’s still got a box of something called K’n-yan salts in the living room,” Chris says. He ambles in while looking over a piece of paper, which he hands to Stiles once he notices Stiles is interested. “Looks like he was shipping it as a return. Wrote a very nasty letter about how he expects that if he’s ordered a high-caste individual, he’s going to get better than a junior sanitation engineer.”

“No kidding.” Stiles skims the letter, then notes the supplier address. “Well, come on, if you’re going to order from a bulk-rate warehouse, what do you expect?”

“Well, I suppose that settles whether or not he’s knowingly involved this time,” Peter says in a pointed tone.

He’s standing right next to Stiles so Stiles looks up sharply, but it turns out he’s talking to Chris. Who does not like whatever Peter is insinuating, and who gets very sarcastic during the ensuing argument about how to cover up Harris’ upcoming involuntary withdrawal from society.

Deaton gets dragged in too, looking like he’s had to referee way too many of these accidental-landslides-in-the-preserve versus secretly-involved-in-violent-gang debates, but he manages to gesture that there’s more in the living room. And since it seems like a completely local argument they’re having, Stiles just goes on and exits.

Derek tags along too. Despite the perpetual scowl, he does seem to care about keeping the peace in town, so Stiles assumes he’s just curious about what Harris is up to and tells him not to touch anything before Stiles has looked at it. He doesn’t answer, so Stiles walks into the living room. It’s not that big and all the furniture’s been pushed up against the walls to make room for the stacks of paper on the floor, which all have little Post-It flags.

Stiles squats down and determines he’s looking at: invoices; local news clippings of animal mutilations and people behaving bizarrely; printouts of bootleg excerpts from the _Necronomicon_ and similar tomes of dark lore; and normal teacher stuff like grade lists for different classes, prep work for internal presentations, which he immediately discounts. “Yeah, okay, so evil intentions don’t mean you’re a slacker at your job,” he mutters to himself.

“So why are you interested in Peter?” Derek asks.

When Stiles looks up, Derek’s sat down at the opposite end of the stacks. He meets Stiles’ gaze and deliberately holds his hands away from the stack that’s in front of him.

“You know, you usually save the sucking-up part for _before_ you launch the awkward question,” Stiles says. “Also, I haven’t gotten around to systematic testing yet, but just on an empirical basis, I’m pretty sure he can hear you, and I don’t think figuring out the best way to disappear somebody is so hard for him that he can’t multi-task.”

Derek shrugs. “He can be flattered that you’re defending him all he wants in there, but Chris Argent isn’t going to let him win an argument about body disposal. Which is a long time to pretend you didn’t hear me.”

Stiles seriously considers it. A quick riffle through the invoices doesn’t do anything except confirm what they’ve already guessed, that Harris was the source of the summoning powder that took out the Nemeton, and that he’s also ordered way more pencils than anyone in their right mind should need, even once you factor in Scantron exam usage. They still don’t know what Harris’ actual endgame is, and Stiles needs to figure that out before they run up against the guy.

On the other hand, Derek has one of those stares that just eats at you, little by little, till you glance up for the twentieth time and realize he’s still in the exact same position. It’s even worse than the curse-frozen mummies in the anthropology wing of Miskatonic’s museum, since obviously, Derek actually can unfreeze himself whenever he feels like.

“Isn’t it really early for a shovel talk?” Stiles mutters, sifting through the _Necronomicon_ excerpts. “I mean, usually people wait till there’s at least some sign of commitment, and I don’t think _that_ has a smell.”

Derek gets a strange expression on his face, half-mild horror, half-confused. Then he shakes himself. Points to the brochures and, well, there’s a lot of paper, so Stiles scans them with his phone and then nods that Derek can pick them up. “It’s not that,” Derek says, poking at them. “I don’t really care whether you two are in love or it’s just for the library access or whatever, I just want to know that it’s not going to end with something _else_ trying to kill everybody here.”

Stiles looks up sharply. “So…that worry directed at anybody in particular?”

“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time Peter screwed up something, even if he always says it’s because other people didn’t do it right.” Derek’s head twitches to the side and his mouth twists into a darkly amused smile, which is completely not directed at anything Stiles is doing. “Though, you know, maybe they’re not doing it right because _someone_ didn’t know how to give them instructions, and anyway…he’s still my uncle. It also wouldn’t be the first time somebody came to town and suckered one of us just because.”

The _Necronomicon_ excerpts are all about Shub-Niggurath, except for a few that are about Hastur, but those are aimed at how to keep Hastur from getting involved so Stiles discards them. Then he starts going through the printouts again, trying to figure out which ritual the big show’s likely to use. If he can do that, he figures he can at least figure out what kind of body count, and what size public space, Harris is going for. “Okay, well, so what if I told you that we just want to hang out and read forbidden texts together, and have hot library sex? Also, I’m pretty sure all that wouldn’t even happen here.”

Derek’s still making faces at whatever communications he’s getting that are beyond the range of human senses, but he spares a moment to glower at Stiles over a map of the preserve. “I actually would buy that from him, with how he’s been lately,” he says. “But what the hell do I know about you?”

“Hey, listen, I—” and halfway into his rant about the many and varied ways he could’ve chosen to blitz into town, witness his newly-former classmates, he realizes that one, he’s screwing up again with the non-locally intelligible references and two, he actually has the _perfect_ local reference “—am friends with Scott. He’s friends with _me_.”

Derek starts to snort.

“ _And_ ,” Stiles says. “And. He thinks _I’m_ cool.”

For a second Derek’s face flattens out into a glare. Then his head and shoulders twitch sideways, away from the kitchen, where Chris is saying loudly enough for even Stiles to hear that if Peter’s going to be like that, Chris is just going to do what makes sense and Peter can go take it up with Melissa if he still disagrees. There’s also a muffled noise that could be somebody laughing.

“Okay,” Derek mumbles. He tosses the preserve map towards Stiles and then shakes out another brochure. “Fine. Scott’s judgment isn’t as awesome as you seem to think, believe me, but nobody he’s ever thought was _cool_ has tried to kill us, I’ll give you that. So what’s this asshole up to?”

“Well, far as I can tell, full-on Great Old One entry. We’re not just gonna get a couple tentacles with a side of madness, we’re going to get the complete Shub-Niggurath strip show, and let me tell you, she is _not_ one of the pretty ones, even by their standards,” Stiles says, holding up a Xeroxed engraving. It’s pretty abstracted, but even so, Derek quickly looks away. “What’ve you got?”

“Just Nemeton stuff,” Derek says. He flips through a couple more brochures, then frowns and starts to unfold one, just as Peter walks in from the kitchen.

Peter’s got a little tray filled with glasses of soda and a platter of…cheese and salami with some strategic dabs of jam. “Alan and Chris said the fridge looked all right, and I wasn’t picking up anything either, but…” he dips down so Stiles can scan the food with his phone “…for a raving madman, he does seem to have quite decent taste in snacks. Though the Coke’s only diet, I’m afraid.”

The scan comes out fine, and come to think of it, this trip has been unusually low in caffeine, so Stiles snags himself a drink and a piece of cheese. Then he scoots over to make room for Peter, who has a very calm smile on his face as he sits down by Stiles, putting the tray just out of reach of Derek’s lifted arm.

Derek narrows his eyes. Puts down the brochure, all grudging brows, and then gets up on one knee so he can close those extra inches. Which is when Peter, now interested in the invoices, decides to plop the platter down on the floor by him and away from Derek.

“So, um, kids,” Stiles says. “I know the teacher ended up being an evil alien-summoning dick, but come on.”

“Oh, I know I’m being petty,” Peter says, while frowning over an invoice for rare books. He shifts the sheet to his other hand and then holds out the platter so Derek can go for the salami. “Forgive my moment of weakness, but there’s just something about being accused of not realizing my romantic interest might have homicidal leanings by somebody who’s had _two_ psychotic—”

“Says the guy who wants to date somebody who can mess with sanity-eating aliens,” Derek snipes back. Then he glances at Stiles and it’s not exactly apologetic, but it’s not particularly accusing either. “No offense. It’s just, if you can put them down, you can call them up, can’t you?”

“Yeah, and I think that might be the nicest thing you’ve said to me to date,” Stiles says. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Peter shoot Derek a nasty look. Then Peter pointedly shifts closer to Stiles, who decides that sure, he’ll just reach over Peter’s lap and turns out that’s a long stretch, so let’s just grab Peter’s knee for a second while retrieving more cheese. And Peter _totally_ gets smug about it.

Derek looks at them, and then picks up three more brochures and looks at them all at the same time, like a little accordion-fold wall around his face. “God,” he mutters. “If we can just figure this out and go kill something so I don’t have to smell this, I will shut up, okay?”

* * *

His unusually sane exterior aside, Harris fits the typical Cthulhic summoner profile with having copious, detailed notes about every stage of his introduction to the Great Old Ones and skills-building in murder and mayhem. He even has the diary entries about exactly which students and fellow teachers have forever wronged him—Chris goes out a couple times to make sure that the police are looking into the ones who haven’t already ended up in the hospital—as well as a manifesto about how it’s not fair that Scott McCall, who in Harris’ words wouldn’t know an anode from an anion, has ended up a heroic, beloved figure while he, possessor of a superior chemical mind, is stuck scrounging the scraps of frat-house nights at the downtown clubs.

“Okay, so _that_?” Stiles says, letting the last page dangle from his fingers. “That’s not typical. I mean, if you’re getting sex, you usually have a pretty compelling argument for leaving the world as-is, instead of importing Cthulhic entities who make the _Alien_ chestburster look like a Hallmark card about pregnancy fears. And how is it _Scott’s_ fault that non-drunk women can tell this guy’s a loser? Is Scott running a safe-walk patrol or something?”

“I think he does, actually,” Peter says. He’s lying on his back, hair tips just brushing Stiles’ leg as he squints at the invoices he’s holding over his head. “Derek, weren’t you and Laura arguing with him about something like that?”

Derek, flat on his belly with his head mostly smushed into the crook of his arm, moves just enough to poke the stack of angry letters Harris has written various allegedly subpar suppliers of dark arts raw materials. “No, it was Laura and his mom. I just wanted them to stop borrowing my car,” he mutters.

“Okay, well, I don’t think Scott was messing with his game that much, given all this gloating about how Scott hasn’t even noticed what he’s up to.” Stiles drops the sheet and then rubs at his aching eyes. “Man. How long have we been at this?”

“Two hours,” Peter says, consulting his phone. Then he frowns and swipes at the screen. “Oh, it’s Melissa, wondering if we have an update. They still haven’t found Harris, though they’ve gotten hold of the principal and convinced him to go along with them. But since classes are out, they can’t come up with a good reason to call Harris in.”

Stiles sighs and looks at the boxes they’ve brought in from all over the house. All those green Post-Its waving at him, all this documentation, and none of it says what Harris wants to do for the grand finale. “Well, we’ve got a metric ton of grudges, about a thousand cursed pencils that aren’t accounted for yet, and no update. Why is this guy so _hard_? I mean, you’ve beaten him before, haven’t you?”

“Yeah,” Derek grunts, pushing himself up. He cracks his shoulders and back, then turns around. “Wasn’t even Scott or one of the Argents, _Isaac_ got the better of him, so…look, I’m getting some water. You want anything?”

“I’ll take a glass,” Peter says. “Also, do us all a favor and call your sister and make sure she’s not secretly panicking and about to go off on the good sheriff—”

“I called her, and Cora’s trailing her, and I think Scott’s mom gave her a lecture, but fine, I’ll call her again,” Derek says, stalking into the other room.

Right about then, Stiles realizes he’s out of Coke and could use something to drink too, but Derek’s already in the kitchen. So he could play on that werewolf hearing, but then he thinks maybe he should just put up with it, as an extra spur to…to…just sit here and slowly die of thirst and lack of inspiration, until the Great Old Ones come to eat them all.

Okay. So yeah, they’re definitely on high alert and all, but being melodramatic never solved any fire drill that Stiles has ever been in, and also, it makes him feel way too much like that one dick who always shows up to the first day of lab bragging about all the advanced field studies they’ve done in some obscure Transylvanian boarding school and who faints before they get past the humanoid specimens.

“If you’d like to take a break, I don’t think anything’s going to happen in the next five minutes,” Peter says. He’s rolled onto his back again. Still with the phone, but he’s looking at Stiles, and not like he’s trying to weasel anything out of Stiles. Just like he thinks maybe the way Stiles’ left eye has developed a slight tic might be a matter of concern. “Even if it is, we have lookouts posted everywhere, and everyone’s phone is fully charged and they all know to take a call or text from you so we can get the banishing incantations out there.”

Stiles pushes himself back to at least lean against the couch. “Let me guess, the smell of imminent panic is especially fragrant to werewolves?”

Peter’s brows lift. Then he twists himself over onto his belly and pushes up to sit on one folded leg, in one fluid, effortless, kind of distracting display of flexing muscle. The brief fillip the bottom of his shirt does to flash some belly doesn’t even seem to be intentional. “Should we be?”

“I—don’t—I mean, you know this guy, I don’t,” Stiles says. He scrubs at the side of his face, glaring at the papers. “I just have historical stats and one psychological profiling seminar I ended up taking pass/fail because Analytical Chem Lab is sixteen hours a week, because of the extra decontam time, and they drop you from all labs if they detect severe sleep deprivation and I just—I don’t know what this guy is _doing_.”

Then he lets his head thump back against the couch cushions. Stares at the ceiling while Peter inhales, pauses, and then shuffles around like maybe the man’s realized he doesn’t need to put up with this level of awkward to get what he wants, and retreating to the kitchen with Derek probably would be more fun.

So when Peter suddenly appears over him, Stiles starts up. Knocks his own head off the sofa, yelps and scrabbles for balance, and finally ends up flopping gracelessly, his legs jerked up off the ground to keep from stirring up the paper stacks as Peter blinks down at him. Peter starts to say something, then stops himself. Instead, he turns and finishes twisting the blinds shut—the sun _had_ been right in Stiles’ eyes, come to think of it—and then he stoops down and offers Stiles a hand.

Stiles takes it, because no point in being proud when you’re already imitating a half-reverted Deep One stuck on the beach at low tide, and then gets surprised for the second time when Peter pulls him all the way onto the couch rather than just setting him straight on the floor.

“I think that break might be more of a necessity than a luxury at this point,” Peter says. His tone is a little on the dry side, but mostly he seems genuinely serious. He reaches down and picks up what’s left of the food platter, and offers Stiles the last piece of cheese. “I don’t know about you, but I can only stomach so many basic mistakes about astrological principles, especially from somebody with supposedly superior training.”

“You noticed how he’s always screwing up planetary conjunctions, too?” Stiles says. “Clearly, the superior chemical mind doesn’t mean much when it comes to astronomical calculations. He’s just lucky Shub-Niggurath’s not so big on obscure math as the rest of them.

Peter snorts, glances at the papers at their feet, and then rolls his eyes, and okay, for a second there Stiles forgets how frustrated he is in the glow of their mutual disgust. But then thinking about how nice it is to actually have somebody _agree_ with him about how ridiculous the evil whoever is leads into remembering that, ridiculous or not, this Harris guy still has them beat, and Stiles is right back to wondering what the hell he spent all that time at Miskatonic for, anyway.

“And yet, we all missed his apparent scholarship on extradimensional summonings,” Peter mutters. He’s still looking irritably at the papers, and as Stiles watches, he prods some Powerpoint slide printouts with his foot. “I didn’t buy his brainwashing excuses, but even I didn’t think he could tell an incantation from a cantrip. He certainly wouldn’t have ever noticed how perfectly he fit into the darach’s shopping list he was helping her assemble if McCall and his mother hadn’t intervened.”

“Well, that’s kind of what they do, right? Scott and his mom?” Stiles says. He’s a little thrown by how honestly scathing Peter sounds about himself. “I mean, heroics, not really your line.”

Peter’s mouth quirks. “But evil, on the other hand…” he purrs. He leans a little bit close as he takes a seat next to Stiles on the couch, but by the time he’s settled, he’s distracted by the papers again. He’s still looking at them as if each sheet personally offends him, but there’s an odd strain of humor in his expression too, more self-deprecating than sarcastic. “I used to like to think that if there was _going_ to be a decent threat in this town, it’d better be me. I know it, my family’s been spilling blood over it for generations, and obviously, I have the brains…”

“So…I hate being the bubble-burster and all, but you did notice the clause about Miskatonic including a psych evaluation for library access, right?” Stiles says.

“Oh, yes, of course, and I read the mental-health policy linked off it. Very fair-minded of them to recognize that sociopathy shouldn’t be a _per se_ bar, considering it doesn’t necessarily mean you think destroying the world is in your best interests,” Peter says. He’d dropped into a little reverie, judging by how he pulls himself back, but when he gets around to smiling at Stiles, he’s fully present and very knowing of where Stiles was going with that. “Childhood dreams, but eventually, you grow up and realize threatening people is actually a terribly inefficient way of getting what you want. You have to keep it _up_ after all, and then every idiot with something to prove is going to want an appointment.”

And very knowing of how Stiles is going to take _that_. Behind the smile Peter’s tensed up, his eyes occasionally flicking down to where Stiles is fiddling with his phone in one hand. He’s…defensive, Stiles suddenly thinks. Defensive, and doing a really, really good job of masking it with aggressive nonchalance, and actually, under that, kind of awkward too. Which is probably what convinces Stiles that the man’s being honest.

“That why you want to leave town?” Stiles says. “Because, you know, I was thinking. I get the whole wanting to get away from your fam—I mean, pack—but you can do that without going across the country.”

“I could, but if I’m going to, I don’t really see why I should settle for half-measures,” Peter says. Then he pauses and his head turns slightly towards the kitchen. A second later, there’s the sound of a door closing and Peter turns back to Stiles. “Derek’s taking a call from Laura in the backyard.”

“Oh.” Stiles pokes at his phone for another second, then shrugs and gets up. “Well, you know what, I think I’ll get a water after all. I can get yours too.”

But Peter’s already coming after him, and once they’re in the kitchen, Peter finds two glasses and has switched the fridge outlet from ice to water while Stiles is still figuring out Harris isn’t a filter-pitcher guy. “I think the attraction is about that,” Peter says in a musing tone, filling one glass. “My family’s roots here.”

“And—and getting away from them?” Stiles says.

“Well, I’m not interested in severing those. I couldn’t do that anyway without more fighting than I care for, however much my niece can test my temper,” Peter mutters. He swaps glasses and hands the full one to Stiles. “She’s still family, and the Hale name _does_ carry a good deal of weight, even now. But it does create a frame for what you are, who you are. I’ve lived in that and I won’t pretend I haven’t benefited from it. On the other hand, you can only do so much with it if you decide your interests are elsewhere. Even if you’re breaking the mold, you’ve still started with one.”

“Instead of just going freeform to begin with, I think I get it.” Stiles sips a little water and manages to dribble it down his sleeve. He makes a face at himself and switches the hand he’s holding the glass so he can unbutton his cuff and rub his wrist dry against his hip. “I mean, sure, being the rebel against the establishment sounds cool and all, but the day-to-day’s a lot of paperwork jockeying and putting up with jealous assholes who try and sabotage your publications—”

“—or presentations?” Peter suggests.

They’re both a little stiff for a second, and Peter presses his lips together like he might be rethinking that. But…well, it’s true, Stiles thinks. “Yeah, though for the record, Miskatonic’s actually pretty good about hiring professors who give you the grade you earn. It’s just the administration and student body and alumni who needed a couple remedial lessons in how bullshitting usually ends up right back on your own face.”

“Of course. A valuable lesson for anyone to learn, at any point in their life,” Peter says. He’s smirking again, and holding his glass against his chest so that the condensation sticks his shirt to its side, stretching it just enough from him that the collar has this tiny little gap with the attention-sucking power of a shiny black trapezohedral link between dimensions. And when Stiles finally drags his eyes up out of that, Peter’s leaned forward enough so that his breath is puffing in Stiles’ face. “Which brings me back to my original point, Stiles. I’m not sure if you can understand just how genuinely _refreshing_ it is to have someone irritated with me over something besides my family.”

“Yeah, no, you can definitely be sure that this time, it’s all you,” Stiles says, rolling his eyes. He steps back while Peter chuckles into his water. Has another sip himself, and then puts his glass down on the counter behind him. “So this whole, let’s date the visiting weirdo—”

“Oh, weird, hardly. It’s a small town but we’re not provincial by any means,” Peter scoffs. “Let’s not confuse novelty for naïveté, Stiles.”

He stops when Stiles puts both hands on his front and pushes him into the opposite counter. Granted, that’s so he can instead look absolutely delighted about that, which rapidly shades into an interested kind of smugness that is—well, smug, but also, infuriatingly effective with how Peter outright settles into it. Sprawling himself back against the counter, letting his belly dip under Stiles’ hands, getting that warming glint in his eyes, it all ends up pulling Stiles right up against him.

“I was gonna say, before you had to get all witty and stop me from actually complimenting you,” Stiles says. Because yeah, this is a little quicker than he’d been planning on, but…leaning up on Peter and feeling the man’s nicely muscled body flex into him is not exactly a hardship, even with the smirking. “The whole, let’s date while mutually advancing each other’s research interests, and maybe, now that you mention it, keep it going across the country—”

“I would’ve been leaving at any rate, so it’s not stalking, it’s simply a practical way to arrange my travel plans,” Peter says. He’s slightly shorter than Stiles, actually. The way he holds himself, it’s usually not obvious, but with the counter pushing into his back he’s slouching a little. And then highlighting it with how he’s tipping his head back to match the way Stiles is tilting over him. “I can handle my own costs and lodging, if you’re concerned about freeloading.”

“Okay, I’m _trying_ to say something here,” Stiles says, rolling his eyes. 

He also bumps pointedly into Peter. He’s not actually trying to do anything but stop the rambling, but Peter’s still got the water-glass and when Stiles bumps in, water splashes up against the bottom of Stiles’ chin. Which makes him jump, and his hands slide down Peter’s abs, and he’s got his fingertips inadvertently tucked into Peter’s waistband. He’s about to eep and apologize when Peter goes and interrupts _again_ by sucking in his breath, low and over the teeth, and then, when Stiles glances up at him, going all half-lidded, eyes and slightly-open, just daring for it mouth.

“Well. Well, I was going to, but you know what, I’m starting to think you flirt like this because you don’t know how to just say, hey, I like you too, can we make out now, so I have to make the first move,” Stiles says after a long second. While still staring at Peter’s mouth, because it is a bigger attention-suck than _any_ Elder God artifact he’s ever heard of.

Said mouth quirks in amusement. “Didn’t you say you weren’t going to compliment me anymore?”

Stiles stares at the—the truly _presumptuous_ —and halfway through his heavenwards-eyeroll-aggravated-noise combo, Peter shrugs and bunches up his abs against Stiles’ fists, and kisses him.

Peter’s really good at that, and it’s both irritating and something that has Stiles climbing him like a tree, yanking up his shirt for a better handhold on soft, silky like cream yet sturdy muscle. Enough so that when Stiles grapples his way up Peter’s sides, Peter just grunts a little bit, sucks on Stiles’ tongue, and gets his own double handful of Stiles’ ass.

He hefts Stiles enough that it pries their mouths apart and sends Stiles’ head snapping up so fast that Stiles panics and clingwraps his arms around Peter’s shoulders. Which is exactly what Peter wants, given that his face lasers in on the crook of Stiles’ neck and then he’s making happy little noises, nosing and snuffling his way in between Stiles’ shirt-collar and skin, all warm mouth with the occasional nip to keep Stiles too busy clutching at him to swat his head. That’s probably a werewolf sexual kink subfolder for the to-research list, Stiles thinks, kneading at Peter’s upper back.

When his fingers hook in especially deep over Peter’s left shoulderblade, Peter makes this long, throaty sound that whistles its way down under Stiles’ shoulder to flutter out at the bottom of his shirt, and one, Stiles always knew skintight clothing wasn’t the way to go but suddenly he’s got empirical _proof_ his style’s better in all ways. Two, that’s got to be another kink, because now Peter’s arching himself like he can just _roll_ his ass those couple inches onto the counter, and man but that feels fantastic when you’re in Stiles’ position, snugged up front-side-forward to that.

Three—three, Stiles’ head had already gone shooting over Peter’s head, and now it’s in danger of banging a cupboard. Stiles digs his nails a little harder into Peter’s shoulderblade, going with it so he can duck his head under that. Swings his free hand around and grabs hold of the back of Peter’s pants for balance, and neatly avoids the cupboard by almost getting bitchslapped by a calendar.

He smacks it out of the way, only to have the stupid pushpin come out of the wall so the thing goes down on the counter. It’s one of those cheap calendars that come for free when you make a donation or pay your dues or whatever, with thin, shiny pages that seem to have a magnetic attraction to the slightest bit of skin in their vicinity. One brushes up against Stiles’ hand and he regretfully removes that from where he’d been working it into Peter’s back pocket, so he can pick up the calendar and just junk—

Stiles looks at it again. Then flips it back a month, pushing his other arm up onto Peter’s shoulder so he can fold more of himself down behind the other man and get a better look. Then he hikes up his knees, clamps them around Peter’s chest, and leans down with both arms, walking his second hand down Peter’s back till he can get to the calendar and flip to the front where he can see the sponsoring organization’s logo.

That’s about when Peter realizes that his oral attentions to Stiles’ collarbone, while still extremely pleasant, are no longer Stiles’ top priority. He goes still, pauses, and then shifts his hands to Stiles’ waist. There’s maybe a little miffed noise before he sighs and tries to turn around.

“Hey!” Stiles says, slamming up his elbow just before his head would’ve taken a cupboard corner.

“Oh, yes, of course,” Peter says, with a sarcasm almost as deep as the faux-curtsey he does while pivoting in the opposite direction. “And would you care to share—”

“Those dates that things started happening,” Stiles says. Now that he can straighten up, he does—Peter might be annoyed, but he still puts his hands back on Stiles’ thighs to help brace—and props an elbow on Peter’s shoulder so he can pull out his phone and double-check. “Yeah. Yeah, okay, I couldn’t figure it out because they weren’t connected to any occult stuff, and Scott and Melissa were saying it wasn’t about anything in town either, _but_ they’re on this calendar.”

Peter gives Stiles a good two seconds of shaking the calendar before he clears his throat.

“Sorry, sorry.” Stiles ungrips his knees and twists around—Peter grunts but rearranges his hold to more of a bridal-carry—and moves the calendar to the side of Peter that actually has eyes. “Okay, see, this thing’s preprinted with their annual conference deadlines, right? And when the first cases started showing up, that was the registration deadline, so that’s when he’d know everybody who’s coming and wait, there were _presentations_ in those—”

Stiles jumps out of Peter’s arms and runs back into the next room, tunneling haphazardly through the paper stacks till he finally gets to the teacher-prep stuff they’d been ignoring because, well, that’s actually Harris’ job. He riffles through that, discards all the stuff having to do with school, and ends up with draft Powerpoints for a panel at that teacher conference that the high school is helping to host. Which is happening right now. In town. In an _hour_.

“Oh, shit, we gotta _go_ ,” Stiles says. He grabs the slide printouts, his phone, and then runs for the door.

Then he runs back. Grabs Peter, who’s kept up and isn’t resisting or anything, it’s just that apparently, even werewolf reflexes can’t pivot that quickly, and he heads out. They pick up Derek in the backyard and by the time they hit the car, Stiles has called Scott and he’s dialing Melissa.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> K'n-yan salts references both _The Case of Charles Dexter Ward_ and Lovecraft's collaboration with Zealia Bishop, _The Mound_. Shoggoth buds references Elizabeth Bear's _Shoggoths in Bloom_.
> 
> Cursed mummies, see Lovecraft and Hazel Heald's _Out of the Aeons_.
> 
> If you read Lovecraft, you need to suspend your disbelief that anybody would write a letter or diary in the kind of florid, lengthy detail his characters do, especially while they're increasingly mentally unstable and also supposedly in the middle of frantic life-or-death struggles.
> 
> Shining black trapezohedron references Lovecraft's _The Haunter of the Dark_.


	3. Chapter 3

The conference is downtown, in a nice, central location. Which, unfortunately, puts it at almost an hour from basically everybody, since they’re spread all over town trying to find Harris. Even worse, aside from Derek and Peter, all the werewolves are out at the preserve. “Well, the last time Harris got involved in anything magical, it had to do with the Nemeton and he spent a lot of time in the lesser-known parts of the preserve,” Peter says, a little apologetically. “It does seem logical that he’d hide out somewhere there.”

“Okay, well, we have twenty-five minutes, he can’t have even started chanting yet,” Stiles says. “Besides, if he’s busy trying to summon Shub-Niggurath, he’s way too busy to defend himself, and—”

Derek cracks a couple knuckles, and then his neck. “Yeah, on it,” he says, pushing the button for the freight elevator. “It doesn’t matter how I knock him out so long as he’s out, right?”

Stiles has an irrational moment of resentment for how Derek still makes that look menacing, even though seriously, the only audience they have are the shelves of cleaning supplies. Then he gives himself a shake and turns to Peter, who is going over the conference center layout on his phone.

“They’re not using the whole center but having rooms on two floors make it a little difficult to make sure the sweeps happen at the same time and there aren’t gaps he can use,” Peter mutters. “The presentation’s right in the middle, too, and with the staircases and elevator where they are…really, I don’t know what the organizers were thinking, it’s awkward even when you aren’t trying to hunt down—”

Both he and Derek snap their heads up. Then they relax, but Derek pinches at the bridge of his nose, obviously annoyed, while Peter wrestles with his feelings for a few seconds before settling on reluctant acceptance.

“Three-way sweep would be more efficient,” Peter says.

Derek rolls his eyes. “Sure, but if you make me take her this time, it’s not my fault when she gets us thrown out.”

“Actually, I think historically it’s been about half you and half her,” Peter says dryly.

Derek has just enough time to scowl at that before Stiles hears somebody running towards them. It’s obviously reinforcements, and when Scott swings around the corner, Stiles has just enough time to grin and wave before Scott, manfully grinning back, collapses into a panting heap against the wall. He bends over his knees and wheezes a few times, then looks up.

“Hey. Sorry. Took forever—find parking,” he pants. He coughs and then pushes off the wall. “Okay, so where—”

That’s when their other back-up rounds the corner. Stiles was expecting Erica, just based on what’s seemed to annoy Derek to date, but he obviously should’ve factored in Peter’s reaction too, since it’s not her. It’s Cora.

“So where’s the dickhead?” she asks, looking at Peter’s phone.

“We’re working on it. _Systematically_ ,” Peter tells her, and then he lays on an almost parentally durable stare-down of her little scoffing head-tilt. “Harris was kicked off his panel after Melissa spoke to the principal, but his presentation’s still scheduled to go forward and—”

“What’s the presentation?” Scott gasps. He still sounds a little wheezy, and when Stiles gives him a thump between the shoulderblades, he makes a weird gargly noise and then straightens up with a noticeably looser posture.

Werewolf anatomy and honestly, Stiles is going to have to re-enter undergrad and pick up a third major at this rate. “Room two-thirty, Current Trends in Sex Ed.”

Scott starts to say that’s okay, and then clearly has to reset himself. He and Cora, who skipped straight to the disbelief, stare at Stiles.

“Didn’t somebody say he got demoted to freshmen bio?” Stiles says. So it’s icky, sure, even with his minimal background knowledge he can see that, but he doesn’t think it’s as completely alien an idea as their expressions are making out. “And he’s bitter about that so he’s going to do a huge relevant fuck-you to his peers about it, and Shub-Niggurath is about as close to a fertility icon as Great Old Ones get, even though their idea of intercourse actually is way less about the tentacles than you’d think, and way more about the incorporeal exchange of—”

“Whatever. We’re whacking the guy before we even get close to that, right?” Cora says.

The elevator _finally_ arrives. “Derek, you’re east, Scott and Cora, you’re west, and Stiles and I will handle disabling the Powerpoint,” Peter says crisply, stepping into it.

“Don’t touch any pencils, do not punch the tentacles, just get me, try not to panic people because that just feeds the Great Old Ones, and whatever you do, don’t stop to hear his speech about his awesome plan,” Stiles says, following him. “We do not care. The plan doesn’t matter, it’s all shot to hell once you add in Cthulhic entities anyway, we just want him to shut up so I can shut this down.”

Cora rolls her eyes. “Like I said, whack him. Easy.”

“You’re taking her,” Derek says to Scott.

Who blinks, looks at Cora like his greatest worry is that she’s going to be offended by that—she’s not exactly looking pleased, but that might just be the hereditary Hale default face, given how much she and Derek look alike right now—and then rolls back his shoulders. “Okay,” he says. Then he looks at Stiles. “Anything else?”

“Uh, no, I think those are the big bullet points we care about,” Stiles says.

“Great,” Scott says. He pauses, then reaches out and squeezes Stiles’ shoulder. “So we’re good.”

Stiles opens his mouth, then pauses. Scott frowns, a little concerned, and Peter’s looking over too, but it’s not that Stiles isn’t sure about how to answer that. It’s that he _is_ sure, and _that_ is the surprise. He’s been all over the place lately, and it’s just…it’s kind of funny how quickly that’s gone away.

“Yeah,” Stiles says, before Scott freaks out too much. “Yep, we’re good.”

* * *

Stiles and Peter hit the conference room, which is just starting to fill up. They already know that all of the presentations were preloaded this morning onto laptops, so Peter scans the gaggle of panelists awkwardly chatting at the front of the room, clocks a woman off to the side, and pauses just long enough to catch Stiles behind a potted plant and murmur that this will _only_ just take a second.

By the time Stiles has straightened out his clothes and scuffed the bits of fallen soil into the corner, Peter’s made his way up front and has chatted himself into being viewed as some kind of IT expert, judging from how he’s manhandling the cables snaking between the laptop and the projector. He’s smiling and sidling into everybody’s personal space and making them apologize to _him_ for it, and okay, so Stiles takes a moment to just admire. It’s not even lust, it’s just, damn, but it looks easy when Peter does it.

Then Stiles shakes himself and gets to work. He finds an empty box, gets creative on the side with a marker and containment runes, and then positions himself by the door. “Raffle for a free dinner downtown, wine included!” he says as cheerfully as he can. “Nope, no cards, just pull out your official conference pencil and write your name on the side—yep, got a marker for you, right here—no, sorry, official pencils only. But enter as many times as you have pencils!”

Just like with college professors, the lure of paid booze is irresistible. A couple of them do ask him which restaurant it is, citing dietary restrictions—Stiles flails for a few seconds, trying to remember the name of that grill Peter took him to, then remembering that menu was _not_ vegan-friendly, let alone macrobiotic. And then he remembers that sometimes alibis are better when they’re not specific, and tells them that they’ll be able to choose from a selection of local establishments with a separate cap on the wine costs, and that does it.

Ten minutes in, Scott calls him. _“We caught him!”_ Scott says excitedly.

“Where?” Stiles says. He edges back towards the doorway, stifling a grunt as he hefts the box of pencils under his arm—he probably doesn’t have all of them, but what he does have is weighing like a brick—and then catches Peter’s eye.

 _“One of the spare rooms, he wasn’t chanting yet, he was still unpacking,”_ Scott says. There are other people with him, muttering about getting the legs and stop stepping on toes. _“We, um, knocked him out, Cora said he was going to say something. I’m not sure it wasn’t just my name but you did say—”_

Peter rounds off whatever he’d been saying to the cluster of teachers avidly watching him stick cables into ports, collects a handful of little slips of paper, and then works his way back towards the front of the room, triumphantly waving a USB stick at Stiles. “No, no, that sounds perfect,” Stiles says. “Are you guys still there? What room is—yeah, free dinner, alcohol not only included but encouraged, the booze money is use it or lose it—sorry about that, Scott, so where—”

 _“Oh, so, we had to, um, move him into the men’s bathroom on this floor,”_ Scott says. _“Some of the stuff he brought with him kind of stands out and we wanted to get that away, and there’s a big window on the door of the conference room, and anyway, Derek says he can just stand in the doorway and tell everybody the toilets here are broken.”_

“Okay, sounds good. We’ll be right there.” Stiles hangs up and then turns to plop the box of pencils on Peter, who’s just made it up to him. He pauses and huffs, leaning against the wall and shaking a sore arm. “You were listening, right?”

Peter holds that box like it’s got nothing but feathers in it, balancing it on a couple fingers as he flicks in the USB drive. His shirt-sleeves aren’t even straining. “Of course. That bathroom’s a little far from the elevators, but I suppose someone will need to deal with the security footage anyway.”

“What, we can’t just get him fake-arrested?” Stiles says, leaning out the doorway. A few more people are walking down the hall towards the room, but other than that, he thinks everybody who’s going to come probably has already showed up. Anyway, he’s got enough pencils now that he thinks he can just work some sympathetic magic to disarm the ones he didn’t get.

“Well, we could, but then we have to call the sheriff and trust that he’ll give Harris _back_ to us before the man wakes up,” Peter mutters. “The last time we told him not to give a prisoner anything to write with, he let them have a newspaper. It’s downright _embarrassing_ to be hexed with cut-outs of classified ads.”

The last couple people come up and Stiles goes into his spiel about the free dinner raffle, while Peter holds out the box and purrs invitingly about chances at one last fling before leaving town. They collect two more pencils and one awkward question about where Peter goes for flings, if he happens to have any recs.

“Yep, I can see that,” Stiles says, eyeing Peter. “I mean, I guess you can’t get _too_ risqué with print, but you’ve still got the short-term rentals and all.”

Peter sniffs a little, then raises his brows. “Why, Stiles, I was sure we’d gone over this,” he says, closing up the top of the pencil box. Which, for some reason, seems to take so much effort that he’s got to lean over it to get the flaps down—and which also puts his face where he can take another, completely unnecessary sniff at Stiles. “You don’t see any kind of decent return on a rental, let alone those risky short-term ones where you hardly even get to know who you’re dealing with, on either side.”

“If this is some kind of lead-in to a metaphor about background checks as foreplay, okay, let me just say, one, I’m not actually into real-estate fetishes,” Stiles says. 

He takes a step out of the room. Of course, Peter takes a step with him, and then also an extra inch or so, but they’re done here anyway, so if Peter wants to insinuate them into some weird, yet annoyingly enticing tango down the hall…Stiles might actually be looking forward to just how Peter manages around the pencil box. Werewolf strength doesn’t do anything about its bulky size, and it could be a good practical observation of werewolf agility and improvisational skills, and okay, _fine_ , so Stiles just wants to stop with the verbal dancing already. Danger’s over, and even he only wants so much witty repartee.

“Two,” he says, as inside the room, a speaker announces that they’re going to get started. “Two, much as I appreciate the masterclass in adaptive flirtations, why don’t we get back to those family records of—”

“We have a little change in panelists today. One of our panelists couldn’t make it, but he did put together the bulk of this presentation, so I just want to be sure and acknowledge his help while we’re trying to set up the slides. Mister….Mister…ah…I hope I’m pronouncing this right… _Cthulhu fhtagn_. Cthulhu fhtagn?”

Stiles freezes. Peter twitches, then slides right out of amused curiosity and right into disbelief dawning on the kind of bitter resignation you experience when you realize that _speaker bios_ are what’s going to do you in. God. As if trade conferences weren’t already natural cesspools of historically bad ideas, thoughtless catastrophes, and psychologically damaging icebreakers.

“Ah, no, I got it,” the speaker goes on. “ _Cthulhu fhtagn R’lyeh gry’hul!_ ”

Stiles grabs Peter by half the man’s ass—because that’s the first handhold he’s _got_ , it’s not like he gets off on disasters—and shoves him aside, and goes running back to the doorway, phone in hand, already screaming counter-incantations. 

But he’s too late. These pencils must have had some sort of timed delay, he realizes, staring in at the room of rhythmically-nodding heads, all of them droning along with the dazed-looking, swaying speaker at the podium. A muffled crack of thunder comes through the ceiling, and even though the conference center has more than adequate fluorescent lighting, it’s suddenly so dim that Stiles’ glowing phone screen looks like a miniature sun.

The ground rumbles and jitters, sending Stiles hopping on one foot, trying to keep his balance as he scrolls through his incantations. Cthulhu’s always going to be part of the basic repertoire of any Great Old Ones resource, but Stiles was expecting Shub-Niggurath so he’s got the spells for that one front-loaded, and—a whistling noise makes him look up just as the doors whizz shut.

Something grabs his wrist and yanks his hand off the doorway just before it would’ve gotten pancaked by the heavy doors. Peter, wrestling to keep hold of the pencil box as he swings them towards the wall. He lands first, then grunts heavily as Stiles runs into his surprisingly-softer-than-drywall chest. He’s a little bit wheezy, but manages to keep upright, and then, once Stiles has a good grip on his waist, he stabs the claws on his free hand into the wall to keep them there.

“Cthulhu?” Peter yells above a rising howl, as somehow the air inside the center starts whipping up towards tornado.

“I don’t know either, doesn’t make sense!” Stiles yells back. “Shub-Niggurath’s already touched down a couple times, those two get territorial, second Cthulhu comes through and sees that’s already been here—”

“Stiles!” comes the ragged, but still recognizable, fragments of a shout from Scott. Just visible down the hall is a small group of people trying to fight against whirling flyers and forgotten name badges to get towards them. One of the figures is waving something at them, some kind of bag. “Stiles! We got—we got his stuff—”

The wind gets too loud for Stiles to yell over, so he clamps his legs around Peter’s knee and waves back, hoping Scott can see it. Peter snarls irritably and then what feels like an anvil sideswipes Stiles’ calf, making him swerve so that he just avoids having the box of pencils thump down on his foot. Which ratchets him further up Peter’s leg, and then Peter stomps his foot on top of the box and hooks his arm under Stiles’ ass, and yeah. Okay. Peter’s thigh seems like a decently secure seat from which to banish Cthulhu. Stiles has done it from worse, anyway.

 _Anyway_. A couple chants, with Peter doing the chorus whenever the whipping wind lets him crane to see the phone, gets the storm down to where Scott and Derek and Cora can crawl up to them, but it’s not shutting it down.

“What happened?” Scott gasps when he gets up. “We knocked him out!”

Stiles makes eye-contact with Peter, holds up his phone with a meaningful nod, and then hooks his arm around Peter’s neck so he can keep the phone in front of Peter’s face and Peter can chant while he answers Scott. “Yeah, but he got the speaker in there to read off a chant and now they’re all chanting, they’re brainwashed but they’ve got me outnumbered here.”

“So we need to make them stop?” Cora says, cracking her knuckles.

“You can’t punch them fast enough, okay, it’s a whole _room_ and they all need to shut up immediately,” Stiles says. Then he nods at the bag. “What did he bring? Where is he, anyway?”

Derek moves over, revealing that he wasn’t stooping just because of the wind, but also because he’s been dragging Harris by the feet. Harris looks like he’s been taking on a few more blunt-force objects besides fists, so Stiles turns back to where Scott’s frantically eviscerating the bag.

“No,” Stiles says as Scott holds up some candles, little bags of powder, a mutilated protractor. He pauses when Scott digs out some printouts, but they turn out to just be copies of the conference attendance list. “No. No, no, look, is there anything that looks like which spell he was going to use? Don’t tell me he just memorized it, even I don’t wing the summoning spells.”

Scott tosses aside everything he’s got and dives back into the bag. Then he bolts upright, an anxious look on his face as he stares at the roof. “Um, I—I think I hear—”

Peter headbutts Stiles in the upper arm, and when Stiles pulls back to look at him, feverishly jerks his head at Stiles’ phone. Stiles frowns and Peter, still chanting, rips his claws out of the wall and makes a fist with that hand, then pushes out his index and little fingers like he’s throwing heavy-metal—horns. Goat with a Thousand Young, right, and Stiles gets it and switches the phone to the Shub-Niggurath chants just in time for Peter to jam his claws back into the wall, so the two of them don’t fall down when the atrium skylight suddenly shatters, letting down giant tentacle appendages that grab whatever they can reach and then shake hard.

“Give me that,” Derek shouts, snagging the bag away from Scott. He shreds it so it’s lying flat, and as Shub-Niggurath continues to try to grope into their dimension, he riffles through the bag’s contents before coming up with—with some kind of collage where an old engraving of Cthulhu has been cut up, and the headish region and wings have been stuck onto a modern-day CGI rendition of Shub-Niggurath. Then he flips it around to show handwriting on the back, which he reads aloud. “You are—hereby privileged to witness the—the unholy joining and _conception_ —”

Stiles is chanting anti-Shub-Niggurath chants because Peter’s still chanting anti-Cthulhu chants. It’s not working that great since Stiles needs the phone, so Peter’s stuck repeating the bits of chants that he can remember and while Peter is doing amazing for somebody who somehow wasn’t picked up by Miskatonic’s scouting system, it’s still just a partial chant. Even so, that’s just barely enough to keep the two Great Old Ones from mashing them all in an interdimensional hell-zone, which means all Stiles can afford to do is pull a _what_ face. Which isn’t even remotely satisfying.

Cora does him a favor, and crawls back to give Harris a slap so hard that its echo actually makes it through the roaring whine of overstretched transdimensional barriers. “You sick _fuck_ ,” she yells. “Are you kidding me? You were gonna have them make little tentacle babies over our dead bodies?”

When Harris suddenly sits up, broken glasses actually stuck _into_ his cheek in one place, a crazed, supercilious glint in his eye, it’s a genuine surprise to all of them. Even Cora yelps and tumbles back to where Derek can grab her.

“You miserably small-minded _fools_ ,” he sneers. He stabs one foot against the ground and ricochets up to a standing position, then staggers back towards the railing, just missing Scott’s lunge at him. “Did you really think that you could just throw me into freshman _bio_ and forget about me? Do you think something like that’s going stop the truly _knowledgeable_ man? Well, I learned it. It wasn’t my calling but I learned it, I learned your foolish biology and then pushed it to heights you never would’ve even been able to dream of, and now, you fools, you’re going to see—”

The building shakes and Stiles bounces against Peter’s shoulder, losing just enough breath that his chanting momentarily breaks. A tentacle immediately whips around the nearest of them—which is Harris by about three yards.

Harris screams and throws up his arms, and two more tentacles unfurl their many mouths and latch onto those, just as the building shudders enough to knock him over the railing. Which spares them the visuals, and the climbing howl of the wind mostly masks the sounds. Mostly.

“Get _down_ ,” Cora hisses, yanking Scott back from the rail by the leg. “McCall, he’s gone, and even if he wasn’t, who cares and—”

“But now we don’t know what he was going to do, so how do we know how to counter it?” Scott snaps back. He doesn’t kick her off, but he’s pretty brusque as he scoots back to what’s left of the bag. “Okay, okay, we need to—to—”

“Make those people shut up,” Stiles gasps. “They have to stop so we can banish them, and I have an idea and we have to do it before Shub-Niggurath finishes eating him because then I have to start chanting again and—”

Scott and Derek and Cora swivel around and look at him, clearly ready for orders. Stiles…still isn’t totally used to that, but he wastes just a second on it, so he’s getting better at it.

“Box,” Stiles hisses. “Peter, keep chanting.”

Peter nods and braces his hip against the wall so that Derek can pull the box out from under his foot. Derek opens up the box and, with surprising sense, immediately yanks his hands back when he sees the pencils.

“The black candles, light two, and then hold ‘em up over the box,” Stiles says.

Cora grabs the candles and snaps her claws against some metal buckles from the bag to light the wicks, which is a really neat trick and Stiles makes himself ignore the nifty werewolf things for later. Once the candles are lit, she holds them over the box, which Derek holds still, while Scott cups his hands around the flames to keep the wind from blowing them out.

Stiles doesn’t know exactly what spell Harris put on the pencils, but he doesn’t need to if he’s just repurposing it instead of breaking it. He just needs to reset the commands, so to speak, and luckily, he’s got a quick substitution at hand from all the times he had to fend off dickhead other students trying to steal his notes.

“Okay,” he says when he’s finished the spell. “Okay, so now they’ll make all those people chant the school fight song instead and it’s gonna sound a little weird but it doesn’t summon Cthulhu. So we just—”

“Need to get these back to them,” Derek says, picking up the box.

Stiles twitches and Scott clamps a hand around Derek’s arm, then looks at Stiles. “No?” Scott guesses.

“No, we don’t, I made them write their names on them, that’s good enough for sympathetic magic, but—” out of the corner of his eye, Stiles starts seeing Shub-Niggurath’s tentacles lift up, signaling they’re done with Harris “—need an activator, somebody stick your hand in the box _right now_ —”

Derek looks down at the box, grimacing, and then jumps as Scott’s fingers crunch into the pencils. He snaps his head around and stares at Scott, who’s giving Stiles a sheepish little shrug, all, well, you said to, when Stiles was actually going to do the proper thing and disclose side effects and…they’re out of time.

“Tentacles!” Cora yells.

To her credit, she doesn’t just sit there and point. She dives and grabs Scott around the waist, and then she and Derek haul him clear as Shub-Niggurath smashes at the railing. Stiles ducks a piece of carpet, then clingwraps himself to Peter’s front and launches back into the anti-Shub-Niggurath chanting.

Peter’s on the move too, going for the nearest room, but just as he gets to the doorway, Derek stumbles and drops the box of pencils, sending them rolling all over the place. And while Peter _does_ manage to quickstep through them and not slapstick trip on one, that moves him away from the doorway, and the tentacles are clearly coming back for another go before they can get to the room.

The next-nearest room is the one where all the chanting people are, and the doors are still shut. Well, were—Derek _did_ slip on a pencil, but after a couple flails he suddenly slews himself around, powered by sheer outrage, if his snarl’s anything to go by. He hits the doors shoulder-first. They bend in, shudder, and then he grabs a knob and punches a door at point-blank range, and the whole thing rips off its hinges.

Just in time, as a lashing tentacle sends them all pelting over the top of him. Cora first, followed by Scott tumbling head-over-ass into the last row of seats. Then Peter, who wrenches around as he and Stiles slide off Derek’s back so that Stiles, scrambling like crazy, can shove the phone in his face.

“Put it back up!” Stiles yells to Derek.

Derek stares at him, but Stiles has already switched over to chanting the anti-Cthulhu spells with an increasingly hoarse-sounding Peter. Scott saves the day, kicking free of a folding chair and then scuttling up to grab the edge of the fallen door. At that point Derek gets with the program, and the two of them heave the door back up into its frame. A bare second later, they both drop abruptly to their knees as deep dents mash out of the door.

There’s a swirly…thing going on at the room’s ceiling, but Stiles grabs Peter’s head and makes sure neither of them look at it and just keep chanting. With the conference attendees no longer competing with them, the banishing effect finally kicks in: the lights flicker wildly, silhouettes seem oddly elongated, like all the angles are misbehaving, and then everything suddenly goes bright and crisp and normal.

“What the…” somebody says in a dazed voice.

“Gas leak!” Scott yells. “Gas, um, ma’am, _please_ sit back down, we’ve got it under control but we need you to—”

“Earthquake, say it’s an earthquake,” Derek says, just as part of the door noisily splits under the impact of a blow.

Well, in the _room_ it’s good. Stiles twists himself around Peter and about-faces, swiping hurriedly at his phone, and gets the Shub-Niggurath incantations back up. He screams through them in double-time, then triple-time, watching through that broken panel as a big cluster of long, thin tentacles tipped with hoof-shaped spikes swing back and then come slamming forward and—

—Scott and Derek go tumbling back from the shattered door—

—somebody screams—

—and as a few broken pencils rattle in over the door pieces, a sunbeam strays in through the broken atrium ceiling. Then another, and another, and then it’s just a big, pretty flood of light down into the Shub-Niggurath-less building.

“Whoo,” Stiles gasps, flopping backwards.

He has an unusually soft landing, and then Peter pushes them back up. With an arm casually slung around Stiles’ waist, though Peter mostly looks interested in getting some water soon. The man’s coughing into his hand and making scratchy noises.

“What…what…what just happened?” somebody near the front asks in a shaky voice.

“Okay. Okay. Um, hi, I’m Scott, and I’m…I work in facilities, and I’m here to help you,” Scott says, popping up. Covered in dust, a little bit of blood smeared over his jaw and one of his hands. Which he spots and then sticks behind his back, with such an adorably embarrassed smile that Stiles can feel the goodwill in the room inching in his favor. “So, I know we’re all really shaken up, but let’s just listen really carefully and give each other a hand, and we’ll get through this. Okay?”

Stiles plops his face into Peter’s shoulder. “Oh, my God, okay,” he mutters. “ _Please_ , somebody else get it from here.”

* * *

The power of Scott’s smile and a little bit of bashful stammer is really, really impressive. It gets a whole room of people out of the conference center and into the parking lot, peacefully, with a minimum amount of bitching about who gets to go in front of who. The only thing more impressive, to be honest, is the power of Melissa’s side-eye when she and a small fleet of ambulances zoom in a few minutes later and she takes over to announce that a local earthquake has ruptured a gas line and they need to check everybody for exposure, and please report any _hallucinations_ to Dr. Deaton here.

“I’ll do a de-cursing spell as soon as I get the supplies together, but the school fight song doesn’t really do anything,” Stiles explains to her and the rest of her team. “I mean, they’re gonna feel kind of friendly towards cephalopods, but unless somebody absolutely needs to fry calamari in the next few hours, I don’t think anybody’s going to notice.”

Deaton relaxes. Melissa and Laura keep looking intently at Stiles, while Chris, standing a little behind them, looks like he knows why and like sometimes, just a little, he questions his career choices.

“So, by friendly, how friendly?” Laura asks.

Stiles looks at her. “So…why do you know to go with that follow-up—”

Laura doesn’t even bat an eye. “One, I’m a shifter, the only thing worse than people trying to kill you for it is people getting weird about it. Two, I wanted to be an art major and I’ve seen that Japanese print.”

“Well, it’s not like _that_. I mean, okay, maybe if they’re already inclined that way, they might have some extra-nice dreams, but the takoyaki stand at Miskatonic’s cultural fair always sells out, if you know what I’m saying,” Stiles says. “It’s more like, the university just wants you to double-check before you whack that into your fishing bucket, just in case it’s an alumni donor.”

Melissa pinches the bridge of her nose. “Right,” she mutters. “Right, well, they’re out-of-towners, they’re probably not hitting up the seafood counter at the grocery—”

“I’ll go call them anyway,” Chris mutters, walking off.

“—and I guess there aren’t that many restaurants in town that’ll be off-limits now, everyone can still eat somewhere,” Melissa finishes with a sigh.

“I wasn’t really a big squid fan anyway,” Scott adds.

Stiles winces and then, while Melissa and Deaton confer about the best way to handle the restaurant restriction, edges over to the other man. Allison’s also there, and from the way she’s got her arms crossed over her chest, she’s not about to be distracted from the conversation, but she’s also not immediately smacking Stiles one so she might just let this be a conversation.

“So,” Stiles says. “You sticking your hand in. I was actually going to explain—”

“Well, but we were in a hurry, and anyway, if it was going to keep everybody alive and those things out of our world, then we’d still need to do it, right?” Scott says. He reaches over and gives Stiles a reassuring pat. “And I’m okay. Like I said, never eating squid or octopus isn’t going to bother me.”

“That’s going away once you do the counter-curse anyway,” Allison says. “Right?”

“Right. Though since you were the activator, you might have, um, flashbacks once in a while,” Stiles says. “Nothing you can’t push aside once you’re aware, just, you’re gonna be a little more sympathetic to the octopi of the world.”

Scott shrugs. “That’s okay, I liked animals before.”

“Yeah, great.” For one second Stiles thinks about just taking the out and being happy to get away clean. And then he rolls his eyes at himself and shoves that away, because honestly, he knows he’s got atypical social behaviors but he _does_ know that people don’t think about getting away from their friends. Especially when he’d like to come back, he realizes. “So, Scott, while I am really, really grateful that we did get out of this with reality and general sanity intact, and I also appreciate a decisive guy as much as the next apocalypse-stopper…you know you don’t have to stick your hand into every box I tell you to, right? Because I knew you’d listen to me even before you came up with this werewolf rescue business?”

Allison blinks hard, tilts her head, and then smiles at Stiles as she moves up behind Scott, loosening her arms to hug him around the waist instead. Scott gets momentarily distracted by her and some mutual hand-squeezing, but then he puts an arm out before Stiles can leave.

“Hey,” Scott says. “So…I think clean-up on this is going to run long, but let me know if you get tired and want to go home, all right?”

“Yeah, thanks, I will.” Stiles spots an EMT walking by with a tray of paper cups and takes a step towards them, then pauses. “Though honestly, I might, um, look for an alternative venue, just temporarily. Because also, really, you do _not_ need to let me bring everything I want into your guest bedroom. It’s a nice place, and I don’t want you to spend that much on cleaning supplies.”

Scott looks a little confused, and then he sniffs. Then a mix of disappointment and relief goes over his face, followed by a rueful smile. “Yeah, I did say that. But still, let me know if you need a ride back. And don’t worry if it’s late or anything like that, we keep odd hours anyway.”

“Okay, okay,” Stiles laughs. “You’re going to regret that, but okay.”

“I won’t,” Scott says, smiling.

Stiles laughs again, and then walks over to that EMT. He grabs a couple cups and then ducks around the milling people till he finds Peter leaning up against an ambulance and explaining to Laura that yes, in fact, he’s been staying on Scott’s sofa for the past couple days.

“Well, Alan says the upstairs is clear now, just so you know,” Laura says. She’s obviously clocked Stiles’ approach, but is lingering like somebody who’s determined to get one more scolding in there. “Look, you know I hate being Mom-like even more than you do, but just a text or something. Because I swear, if it’s not Derek getting snatched, it’s you, and the whole _not telling_ us children kind of backfires when we don’t know which shady friend you’ve pissed off. And unlike Derek, I’m pretty sure that’ll just get worse when you move out.”

“I don’t know that I’d jump to that conclusion, but as for the rest, duly noted,” Peter says. Still sounding rough, though the smile he turns on Stiles is buttery enough. “Ah, how welcome. I _could_ use some lubrication right about now.”

Stiles stops just short of the hand Peter puts out for the cup. He looks at it, then at Laura. Who is a little slow in hiding her sudden speculative look, and then who looks way too much like Peter when she’s amused.

“I’m just going to go…boss some betas,” Laura says, pivoting towards a gaggle of cops plus Erica and Cora. “Thanks for saving the town, Stiles. I’d say have fun with the rest of your vacation, but I’m pretty sure Peter’s got a few things greased up and ready to go.”

“What is it with the ridiculously extended innuendo?” Stiles says, turning back to Peter. “Do you guys just have a genetic inability to say anything without the dirty metaphors?”

Peter regards him for a little bit, smile fading away, and Stiles ducks his head and ends up staring at the cups in his hands. Sarcasm, he thinks, fine and dandy for puncturing inbred old-money egos, not so much for interacting with the rest of the world.

Well, he brought the cups. He holds one out and when Peter takes it, he might sag a little. Peter keeps on eyeing him, draining the cup. So Stiles holds out the other one and Peter takes that one a little more slowly, keeping his arm extended even after Stiles has let go of the cup.

“As you heard, I can get back into my house now, and you’re now free of evil wizards to chase,” Peter suddenly says. “So, as the first step in improving our mutual acquaintance, would you like to come over and see the family archives?”

“Yeah,” Stiles says. Then he pauses, because he’s pretty sure he just saw Peter sag. The man covered it up by taking a sip at the same time, but there was definitely bending going on before the cup went up. “Yeah, and…okay, to be fair, I don’t mind a decent etching. Just so you know.”

“Stiles, honestly, we’re werewolves, not Luddites,” Peter says. His tone’s chiding but he’s starting to grin again, right behind his cup. “We’ve digitized.”

“So you _don’t_ have any etchings?” Stiles says. Shuffling over, out of the eye-line of the few people looking this way.

Peter finishes off the cup, then considers it as his free hand carefully twitches around the blanket somebody’s given him, rehanging it from his shoulders in such a way that it shields what Stiles might be doing to the front of his jeans. “Well, I think if we look, we might still be able to turn up one or two,” he allows. “Can’t hurt to try the attic.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If it wasn't obvious from my other stories, I like 1) playing with/subverting genre conventions, 2) genre mash-ups, and 3) 1 + 2 = double mash. So this was a comedy, an action/adventure trip, a cosmic-horror-lite story, a Stiles-and-Scott-friendship reboot and also (at least, I intended it to be) a bit of a fish-out-of-water look at Beacon Hills.
> 
> I've been to good and bad trade conventions, and the only icebreaker I've ever liked involved bingo where bottles of wine were the prize.
> 
> Sympathetic magic is common to folklore traditions worldwide, and involves the idea that if you do something to a small part of something bigger, the effect will carry over. A classic example is the voodoo doll.
> 
> Shub-Niggurath actually has a "canonical" mate, Hastur. Although really, Lovecraft's approach to canon master was more of the, screw continuity, that sounds really cool, I'll namecheck you back! approach, and "canon" hasn't gotten much more organized since. Which is one reason why I like the Cthulhu Mythos, despite all of its problematic original elements.
> 
> Laura is referencing the famous _Dream of the Fisherman's Wife_ print.


	4. Chapter 4

The Hale house’s ‘attic’ comes as fully-furnished as a luxury apartment in one of the old Victorian mansions that surround Miskatonic’s campus, complete with the squeaky timber as Stiles humps Peter up against one of the support beams.

All the other werewolves are out on patrol, and Scott’s not picking Stiles up for dinner for a good two hours. They’ve looked through the rest of Ligotti’s hard drive and are sure there’s nobody to handle besides Harris, and while Stiles’ dad is going to fly in with the hardcore clean-up crew, that’s also not for a week. In the meantime, he’s eased back from voicemails to daily texts, and Stiles already sent off his for the day, right before Peter crawled up between his legs and gave him an obscenely wide grin and stuck a tongue in the middle of that grin to lick Stiles from cock to throat.

Peter gives amazing blowjobs. So amazing, in fact, that it took Stiles about three minutes to realize he was _still_ babbling about turn-of-the-century biases against dream analysis even though they knew the Great Old Ones affect the subconscious. Then another minute to work up the energy to lift his head and look at Peter, resting his head snugly on Stiles’ stomach and lazily saying yes, do tell me more, I want to hear all about early Jung applications.

So Peter is genuinely interested in that sort of thing, they’ve gotten to know each other enough for Stiles to know that. They’ve also gotten to know each other enough for Stiles to understand that Peter is also messing with him, because the man’s almost pathologically incapable of resisting the lure, and Stiles might. Kind of. Take that as a challenge.

He might have also done a lot of feverish cramming about werewolf biology and culture, now that he’s not running around town pulling advanced lab techniques out of his phone. So obviously, he knows about the neck thing, but there’s the lesser-known stuff, like bellies. Bellies are important, and denote submission when shown, and when Stiles straddles Peter and shoves off his shirt and then rubs firmly up and down his abs while they make out, Peter is ninety-percent more likely to forget he was trying to talk Stiles into taking things over to the couch.

The couch would maybe be more comfortable, but also it’s more limiting, what with how it’s really not wide enough to get the full effort of all of Peter’s limbs going floppy with pleasure, the man groaning, his cock twitching to full hardness against Stiles’ stomach as Stiles puts both thumbs firmly to the grooves outlining Peter’s hips, then drags them repeatedly down from waist to just short of Peter’s groin. So. Yes. Bellies.

And shoulders. That is a thing for Peter, Stiles remembers this, and it’s probably to do with how raised hackles isn’t just an expression, and when you translate that to a werewolf’s two-legged form, you’re talking an awful lot of stress on those muscles, what with all the silent posturing they’re apparently always doing. So once Peter’s nice and boneless and unresisting, flipping him over and then kneading down around his shoulderblades is a _genius_ move.

Peter gets a little tense when he first lands belly-down, because exposed neck and all, but when Stiles starts digging in, he lets out this gut-deep, achy, moaning noise, like it’s being cut out of him, that’s how deep it comes from, and then he sprawls back out. Ass bunching up as his head goes down, he’s near-mindlessly cheek-rubbing the carpet, his fingers making tiny bunching movements, curling closer and closer to fists till a sharp splaying motion sends them flat against the plush.

Every released muscle makes him shudder all over, shudder and hike up his hips, and that’s some wolf thing too, Stiles knows that, but he’s kind of forgotten the word just now because Peter is making these incredible little, urgent, throaty noises, like he’s figured out the exact note to hit to push every single one of Stiles’ buttons and then give them a long, loving slurp into the bargain. And then Stiles remembers about trying the thing where he bends over and just nibbles at Peter’s nape, and he’s barely even nibbling, more like catching the little hairs at the hairline with his teeth, and Peter just. Seizes up all over, whining and clawing at the floor, and _then_ Peter gets his voice back enough to start telling Stiles to fuck him.

So tight pants. They’re hard to get off just when you’re standing up, which is why Stiles doesn’t go for them, but Peter does and it takes long enough for Stiles to wrestle them off him that Peter starts acting up a little bit. Bumping his ass up into Stiles’ cock so the buttocks catch it between them, then clenching like a pillowy yet firm, toe-curlingly silky, complete _tease_ of a grope.

Stiles knows it’s a tease because Peter starts chortling, actual _chortles_ , when Stiles finally gets rid of the pants and gets hold of the lube and shoves the man back down. There’s no other word for how Peter tucks his head down and lets just one glinting eye show over his shaking shoulders.

Well, whatever, Stiles did _not_ need to look up what to do with his fingers and Peter’s hole, and he has objective authority that he’s got a good touch. Steady, supple, with unusual strength and an instinct for both delicacy and accuracy in low-light to blind situations, that’s what his excavation lab evaluation says, and working in tight spaces is definitely one of those skills that transfers.

That’s when Peter decides he’s going to lose his mind and rub himself all over the floor and then, eventually, up against the wall, which is where Stiles finally pins him long enough to get fingers out and cock in. Peter seizes up again and Stiles dimly recognizes the _thunk_ of sharp things going into wood, and is very glad they went with doggy-style, however cliché that is.

Then Peter goes boneless, sagging all the way down onto Stiles’ cock and then eventually dragging them to the floor with his weight. His claws scratch out of the wall and he shakes feebly at his hands, moaning and rocking under Stiles, and then presses them out to either side of himself so he can start up that bunching motion again. He does that all the way till he comes, and then after, his fingertips still twitching as Stiles, graceless as hell and really not caring, flops on top of Peter and groans into his own climax.

“Mmmmm, showing your work?” Peter eventually says.

Stiles twitches. Then decides smacking the guy isn’t worth it right now. “Maybe.”

“Well, I do love a practical.” Peter’s tongue flicks at the edge of Stiles’ jaw, then again, lapping at the sweat there. Then he puts his head back down. “Imagine Scott’s offered to answer all your questions werewolf, but I do think there’ll be the odd one you won’t want to ask him. And—”

“You’ll be there for those, I figured, but thanks,” Stiles mutters. A little trickle of sweat running off Peter’s hair down his throat is tickling his ear, so he lifts his head and licks it away. Then pauses, watching Peter’s neck muscles tighten around a whimper so faint he barely catches it. He tilts his head, then leans down and licks again, pressing harder with his tongue, and this time Peter outright moans. “So, uh, this still isn’t a marriage proposal, right? I mean, I figured from the smartassery that you’re not suddenly a doormat—”

Peter snorts. “On second thought, you might benefit from more proactive tutoring if that’s the kind of reference you’re reading.”

“Right, and it’s all about my benefit,” Stiles says. While pushing up on his elbows and letting his weight shift back into his hips, nudging him where he’s still deeply buried in Peter’s ass.

“Mutual, mutual, obviously,” Peter gasps. He outright lazes into the shudder that runs up and down his back. “One area where sharing weaknesses truly does improve relations, I’ve found.”

“I know I’m cynical, but you just nailed about everything you wanted, you know,” Stiles says after a moment. He trails a finger around Peter’s left shoulderblade, in case anybody needs an excuse to turn it off the serious way.

Peter glances at him over one shoulder, and for a second Stiles sees a little uncertainty in the man. But then Peter stretches himself out, his eyes closing, and he’s such a perfect picture of living in the moment that Stiles almost second-guesses himself.

“Oh, yes, but you never want to spoil a good start,” Peter says, eyes still closed, voice verging on a sleepy drawl. He presses the heels of his palms into the carpet, then drags one down, very slowly. Stops when it’s about mid-chest on him, then turns his hand around and pushes it under. His fingers twitch and he shivers, then lets out one of those little urgent noises.

Stiles tilts his head. “So, am I learning about werewolf refractory times now?” he says.

He does slide his hand under Peter, right up against Peter’s hand. Which immediately withdraws to wrap loosely around his wrist, encouraging his fingers as he starts tweaking and rolling a nipple. “That seems like one piece of folklore that _should_ be in that database of yours, but if not, I’m—mmm—happy to go over it,” Peter murmurs.

“Okay, come on, now you’re just milk—” Stiles starts.

Then he freezes. Peter…doesn’t freeze, but he does come out of that languid haze of his, eye tracking back to look alertly at Stiles.

“Fuck. I mean. It’s not a tentacle,” Stiles says, and then he almost slaps himself in the face, he’s feeling so stupid. “Sorry, usually I don’t—I gotta be really, really relaxed, and that never happens when I’m not yanking my own chain, and I would’ve done full disclosure if I’d even thought—because I am definitely, absolutely _not_ that kind of dick, I mean, fuck, I’ll get out of you now.”

“Wait,” Peter says, and both his ass and his hand close down on Stiles—cock and wrist, respectively—too. He twists his head further around, looking at Stiles and then down their bodies. Then back up at Stiles’ face, and Peter is…that is not a betrayed look on Peter’s face. Not a repulsed one either. “Wait. That…what was that?”

“Um, me.” Stiles still gets himself ready for a quick exit, bracing his hands on the floor. “I…so when you accidentally miss your window for leaving the Dreamlands, and have to wait around with the natives till the next one, and your body has muscles there it doesn’t here, but then once you get back, you realize that you can still, uh, pass the time in unique ways…”

Peter takes that in, processes it, and then puts his head down. Wiggles it a bit, then moves his arms around, and at that point Stiles realizes he’s getting himself comfortable. “So you can do it again?”

Stiles looks at him. Well, at his sweaty, unreasonably attractively muscular back, and how he does that without even using his face is completely unfair.

“Mutuality,” Peter prompts. “All sparring aside, I do want you to feel like this is a fair exchange. I like you, Stiles, and—I do think you’ll keep liking me. It’s certainly something I’m interested in encouraging.”

“Yeah,” Stiles says after a moment. He watches Peter’s eyes track back to watch him, and then how the man moves just the tiniest bit into him when he pushes up on his hands. Not much, just—improving the angle, before he gets going. “Yeah, well. I guess this is a start.”

“Indeed,” Peter says. Starting off smug, and then, as Stiles flexes out, dragging on into a breathless, hitching groan. “Oh, yes, _yes_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Lovecraft's stories, the Dreamlands operate as another dimension, an alternate reality, and about a half dozen other things depending on what he feels like doing with it. But anyway, he had a dreamer come back with way more severe physical alterations than just some, um, unique musculature in the groin region (his and E. Hoffman Price's collaboration _Through the Gates of the Silver Key_ ).


	5. Chapter 5

“John, this isn’t really a good—” Melissa starts.

 _“Yeah, I know, I’ll make it quick,”_ John breaks in. _“I just finally had a break back here and want to check that everything’s lined up with you before some moron thinks the do-not-revive-extremely-dangerous labels don’t apply to them. State’s got their body?”_

Melissa puts her head back against the pillow. “Yep.”

_“CDC kicked their investigation down the road?”_

“Apologized to the hospital yesterday,” Melissa says.

_“Great. You got all the containment gear, and San Francisco sent you manual version twelve-five-two, right?”_

Swallowing down some unkind words, Melissa reaches over to the bedside table and grabs Chris’ phone. She hands it down for him to unlock, then takes it back and finds the right email, and squints at the filename. “Yep.”

_“Right, that should—oh, wait, did I send you the name of that guy I know in California Fish and Wildlife? San Francisco’s already backing up your cover with the FBI and NSA, but like I said, if the locals get touchy, my experience is it’s better to get them in a fight with the state government. Less conspiracy theorists that way.”_

“Yes, I got it and already set up a call with him,” Melissa sighs. She rakes her hand back through her hair, then makes herself take a deep breath and sound more cheerful. “And I really do appreciate all the help, John. This one went a lot more smoothly than they usually do, and you’ve really—”

_“Hey, any time. Least I can do for somebody dealing with this kind of horseshit, not to mention that son of mi…shit, I have to go, it’s like those idiots think we went digital just so they could kill trees printing themselves into the wrong dimensional gateway…”_

John hangs up. Melissa lowers her phone and looks at it for a second, because no matter how bad his timing is, she knows exactly what that harried tone means and isn’t too hardbitten to feel for him.

“Sounds like he could use a vacation,” Chris says.

She moves her phone so she can look at him. He shrugs, one hand absently feathering back up onto her thigh, and then grins as she waves him up. His head goes down between her knees and his ass briefly humps up under the sheets, then drops as his mouth searches out her clit.

And the sheriff texts her. Melissa glances at it, then tosses her and Chris’ phones back onto the bedside table in disgust. “I know, and then we’ve got that idiot in uniform trying to screw up everything after it’s been settled, talk about men you _wish_ would go but never—huh.”

After a second, she reaches down and pushes Chris off her, because he’s too good to waste when she’s not giving him her complete attention. He makes a startled noise, but doesn’t get resentful, just sits up and cocks a curious look at her. “Do I want to know what you’re thinking?”

“Oh…not now.” Melissa looks back at him, then puts her hand on his shoulder. “Once I’ve worked it all out, but that’s not going to happen in two seconds. And right now, as far as I’m concerned, _we’re_ on vacation.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Chris says, grinning, as he stoops down again.


End file.
